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Monday, December 7, 2015

A Not-So-Cool-Yule at Sheen Palace 1497

Judith Arnopp

Imagine,
if you can, this scene. It is almost Christmas, everything is prepared. The
presents are wrapped, the tree is hung, your mother-in-law has arrived and
settled herself in your favourite chair for the duration of the holiday. The
children are racing around the house, over-excited, squeezing presents and
dipping their fingers into the trifle. You get them to bed early, put your feet
up with a large glass of red, and have just begun to relax when disaster
strikes. The boiler bursts in the loft, or the roof blows off in a gale, or
horror of all horrors – a house fire breaks out.

God
forbid this should happen to anyone but sometimes disaster strikes when we
least expect it and to the most exulted among us.

In
1497, a few days before Christmas, fire raged through Sheen Palace

Henry, Margaret and Mary, at about the time of the fire.

where King
Henry VII, Elizabeth of York, Margaret Beaufort and the young prince Henry, princesses Margaret and Mary were in residence. The cooks were busy in the
kitchen, the jesters and mummers practicing for the big day when …

“About
nine of the clock quite suddenly … within the king’s lodging and so continued
till midnight. By violence whereof …(a) great part of the old building was
burnt and much more harm done upon costrings (curtains) and hanging beds of cloth
of gold and silk and much other rich apparel with plate and manifold
jewelsbelonging to such a noble court.

How
well loving therefore be to God (that) no living creature was there perished…” (Robert
Hutchinson, Young Henry, P.44)

Henry VII

The
royal household were hurried outside to safety. You can imagine the scene; the confused
and crying children, hastily wrapped in blankets, clasped in their nurses’
arms. Men rushing hither and thither to fight the blaze, women weeping,
screaming perhaps as the windows exploded and the ceilings collapsed in a great
ball of flame. Henry and Elizabeth, and the king’s mother looked on in cold
shock as their sumptuous palace was consumed in flames.

The
king, for all his power, was helpless in the face of fate and, after the costly
matter of his recent war with Scotland, and his pursuit of the pretender Perkin
Warbeck, was horribly aware of the financial implication of the disaster. The material
losses were great. The Milanese Ambassador Raimondo Soncino estimated them at
60,000 ducats which is about £7.3 million in today’s money, amounting to one
tenth of Henry’s annual income.

Elizabeth of York

He reported a “Great substance of richesse” destroyed,
including tapestries, wall hangings, bed, clothes, plate and furniture. And
that was not all, precious royal trinkets were also lost. In the following days
the king paid servants £20 a day to sift through the ruin looking for jewels.
(Wroe, Perkin: p.393).

This
was not the first time Sheen Palace had suffered destruction. It was once the
favourite home of Richard II and Anne of Bohemia and when she died of the
plague in 1394, the king, in his grief, ordered the palace to be completely
demolished.

Henry
V began construction of a palace on the site but this was hampered by his death
in 1422 and work did not resume until the infant king, Henry VI, was eight
years old. As the wars of the roses wagged on the palace was given into the
possession of Elizabeth Woodville on her marriage to Edward IV, and passed to
Henry VII after Bosworth.

It
is not believed that the fire in 1497 destroyed the whole building but the
privvy lodgings were lost and lavishly refurbished afterwards. Once the work
was finished and the royal family ready to move back in Henry renamed Sheen as ‘Richmond
Palace.’

In
the years that followed the palace witnessed some of the greatest events in
Tudor history. In Henry VII’s reign alone it saw the wedding of Prince Arthur
to Catherine of Aragon in 1501; the official betrothal of Princess Margaret to
King James of Scotland in 1503. And in 1509, in his favourite palace, the
palace he had built and named in his family’s honour,Henry VII, the first Tudor king, breathed his last.

My novel A Song of Sixpence tells
the tale of Elizabeth of York and her marriage to Henry VII. It considers the
implications of the loss of her brothers in the Tower, her subsequent marriage to
her former enemy. Often portrayed as meek or simply uninteresting, Elizabeth emerges
as a brave and resilient woman in a time of suspicion and unrest.

A
Song of Sixpence is available in paperback and also on Kindle.

Judith
Arnopp is the author of historical novels set in the Tudor and Anglo-Saxon
periods. Her work is available from Amazon and includes:

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Britain leaves us awed by ancient castles, palaces and museums. History pours out a legacy of battles, a developing monarchy, a structured class system, court-inspired behaviors and fashions, artwork and writings that have created a love for all things British. Some of us feel that we must fuel the fire~ we have come together to share our historical work and to reach out to our much appreciated readers. Please enjoy our posts about the history of England, Scotland, Wales and all the Empire.

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